A Tennessee man’s “heated” phone calls with Canadian Muslim leaders prompted a visit to his home by an FBI agent.
Anthony Meeks of Martin, Tenn., said he made about 50 telephone calls to protest Canada’s “unfair” treatment of an Ontario man, Mark Harding, who was convicted under the country’s hate-crimes law of promoting hatred against Muslims. Harding’s community-service sentence has included indoctrination into Islam.
“The fact that the FBI would pay a visit over what may or may have not been a heated debate over the phone is shocking,” Meeks told WND.
Agent Greg Franklin of the FBI’s Jackson, Tenn., office and Lt. Sammy Lyles of the Martin, Tenn., police department came to Meeks’ door Dec. 9 and asked questions for about half an hour, according to Meeks.
Franklin and Lyles did not reply to messages left by WND.
Meeks admitted that many of his conversations with the Muslim leaders became volatile after he asked questions such as, “Are you a member of al-Qaida?” and, “Are you a terrorist?”
The former Marine, who told the Muslim leaders he was calling on behalf of Harding, said he confronted them about aspects of Islam.
“I was very blunt and said I felt they were following a false and deceptive dogma,” he recalled, adding that he referred to Islam’s prophet Muhammad as a “murderer” and “pedophile.”
The leaders Meeks called included Canadian Islamic Congress President Mohamed Elmasry and Mohammad Ashraf, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ont.
Elmasry’s group is preparing legal action under the country’s hate-crimes laws against the broadcast of Rev. Jerry Falwell’s assertion that “Muhammad is a terrorist.”
Ashraf supervised Harding’s community-service sentence.
Elmasry is traveling abroad until January, according to his wife. Ashraf did not reply to repeated attempts by WND to seek comment.
Meeks said he also called several of the 19 regional directors of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
Ali Hindy, the congress’ regional director for Toronto, told WND that his wife answered a call from someone asking if her husband was a terrorist. She replied, “Excuse me?” Then the man asked, “What terrorist organizations does he belong to?”
Hindy said his wife hung up, but later his daughter answered the phone and was asked, “How many terrorists are living in the house?”
His daughter called 911, he said, and reported the phone calls to police.
Meeks acknowledged that he called the number listed for Hindy on the group’s website Nov. 5.
In addition to representing the congress, Hindy is imam of a Toronto mosque and director of the Salaheddin Islamic Center in Scarborough, Ont.
Hindy said he sometimes criticizes the Bush administration’s policy toward Muslims in his sermons at the mosque, “but that doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist. We are not encouraging violence.”
Hindy maintains that terrorism is a symptom of problems brought about by American policy, citing the Palestinian conflict as one example.
“I’m not saying it justifies violence, but while we are working hard to bring justice to terrorist actions, we should go to the core of the problem,” he said.
Bang on the door
On the evening of Dec. 9, Meeks’ wife, Lisa, answered the door after hearing loud banging. The officers identified themselves but never showed their badges, according to Meeks.
“They had me off-guard,” he said. “I had pretty much forgotten about the conversations.”
Lisa Meeks did not want to let the officers in the house. Lyles suggested that they go to the police station, but they finally agreed to meet in the Meeks’ garage.
Meeks, noting that his wife was present during the questioning, said that Franklin was rather vague about his purpose for coming.
“He just asked me if I had been making threatening phone calls to anyone in Canada,” Meeks recounted. “I said, no, I hadn’t been threatening.”
Meeks said he explained Mark Harding’s case, which apparently was unknown to the officers.
“I felt it was unjust and that [Harding] was persecuted and that it was unfair that he would have to undergo Islamic indoctrination as part of the sentence,” he said.
But Meeks said he was unwilling to offer many details of his phone calls to his questioners.
“I thought they were waiting for me to say, ‘Enough,’ and would arrest me,” he said.
Meeks said he was assured he would not be arrested, but nevertheless was guarded in his answers.
FBI agent Franklin indicated that it was not illegal to ask someone if he belonged to a terrorist group, according to Meeks, but thought it was “crazy” to ask of the Muslim leaders, “Are you a member of al-Qaida?” when they picked up the phone.
“What did you think they were going to say?” Franklin replied, according to Meeks.
“As crazy as it may sound,” Meeks explained to WND, “I thought that if I were a terrorist and somebody called me out of the blue, I would probably think twice about carrying out an act.”
Meeks said he thought Lyles was playing the “bad cop bit.”
“When talking about my military service, he asked, ‘Did you get an honorable discharge?’ – almost as though he were implying something,” Meeks said.
Meeks said Franklin would not reveal who filed the complaint against him.
“I said I thought the FBI was a little misguided paying me a visit when I wasn’t going to cause any harm to these people,” said Meeks. “I said I was just a Christian upset by an Islamic minister.”
Meeks said he asked Franklin for his advice, and the FBI agent said, “You probably ought to stop making phone calls.”
“It didn’t appear that there would be further contact,” Meeks said. “My wife and I had the feeling this was a one-time visit.”
Lisa Meeks told WND that while Franklin and Lyles acted in a professional manner, she was afraid for her husband.
“I wasn’t certain what would happen,” she said. “I was just amazed that they were there for that reason.”
Building relations
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the FBI has stepped up efforts to build relations with American Muslims and respond to their concerns. Director Robert Mueller stirred controversy in June when he spoke at the annual banquet of the American Muslim Council, or AMC, one of many Islamic interest groups with suspected ties to terrorist organizations.
Chicago-based Muslim rights lawyer Kamran Memon says that after a meeting with the FBI, the AMC was advised to tell Muslims to register complaints at a special FBI website and to report hate crimes to their local branch of the FBI.
In his June speech, Mueller said that since Sept. 11, the FBI had launched more than 360 investigations of attacks and threats against Arab, Muslim and Sikh Americans and more than 100 people had been charged with federal, state and local crimes.
One of the aims of Mueller’s conciliatory speech apparently was to address Muslim distrust of the agency.
Less than one week before the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Muslim leaders accused the FBI of conducting an “anti-Muslim witch hunt promoted by the pro-Israel lobby in America” after a raid on the Texas offices of a Middle East Internet service provider.
“There is a pattern of bias that often permeates all of these types of investigations,” Mahdi Bray, political adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said at the time.
Last month, the FBI’s annual crime report gave prominent attention to a purported 1,600 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in one year. The agency said the sharp rise (28 to 481) came about “presumably as a result of the heinous incidents that occurred on Sept. 11.” The report indicated that a substantial majority of cases were incidents of intimidation and vandalism.
The FBI recently investigated a complaint that hundreds of leaflets containing threats and disparaging remarks toward Muslims were found in the fenced yard of the Muslim Association of Hawaii.
The leaflet said, according to the Muslim group: “Every curry fund-raiser will be checked to ensure that funds are not being funneled to support terrorist groups. Anyone found in violation will be strapped with explosives and shipped to Iraq.”
Daniel Dzwilewski, special agent in charge at the FBI’s Honolulu division, said officials were investigating the October incident as a hate crime.
“We do not tolerate acts of religious discrimination or violence or hate crimes like this,” Dzwilewski said.
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., charged in October that remarks by conservative religious leaders are fomenting incidents against Muslims.
“We believe the small minority of bigots in our society are being encouraged to take such actions by the anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from right-wing and evangelical leaders,” Awad said.
Awad once worked for the Islamic Association of Palestine, considered by U.S. intelligence officials to be a front group for Hamas operating in the United States. While acknowledging Awad’s former affiliation, CAIR denies any connection with IAP but has defended groups such as the U.S.-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which is accused of channeling funds to Hamas.
Referring to remarks by leaders such as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the leading evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, said in an editorial in its current issue that “verbal attacks on Islam sabotage evangelism.”
War’s priorities
Anthony Meeks said he does not belong to any church but considers himself “something of a Christian activist.”
“I am concerned that our government has its priorities in dangerous disarray regarding this war and that our leaders are afraid to state the truth about Islam,” he said.
He says he sees no distinction between Islam, Nazism and communism.
“All three seek to enslave people and dominate the world by violent force,” he said.
Organizations such as CAIR, the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Islamic Society of North America and others, are “using the FBI to tie up their agents and their resources by chasing down questionable claims,” he insists.
“They would prefer to see the FBI investigate and monitor Christians who defend their persecuted brothers,” Meeks said, “rather than hunt for Islamic terrorists, [which many of] these Islamic organizations are probably harboring and aiding in various ways.”
